Congressional Record, Volume 154 Issue 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)

[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3484-S3496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FAA REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 2881) to amend title 49, United States Code,
to authorize appropriations for the Federal Aviation
Administration for fiscal years 2008 through 2011, to improve
aviation safety and capacity, to provide stable funding for
the national aviation system, and for other purposes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

Amendment No. 4585

(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute)

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I call up my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Rockefeller], for
himself, Mr. Inouye, Mr. Baucus, and Mr. Grassley, proposes
an amendment numbered 4585.

(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Salazar). The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, as I was indicating, I do not think
most of our colleagues--they pick on certain subjects within aviation
that are of interest that have hot buttons to them--look at the general
situation of where the U.S. commercial aviation industry is, how bad
its situation is, and I think it is time to tell the truth about that
before we begin the debate on this bill.
After posting nearly $35 billion in cumulative net losses from 2001
through 2005, over the past 2 years, American commercial air carriers
were able to recover financially for a brief period from the effects of
September 11's grounding and subsequent adjustments. That is
understandable.

[[Page S3485]]

Domestic airlines earned an estimated net profit of roughly $3.8
billion last year, more than twice the $1.7 billion net profits they
achieved in 2006. That would appear to be going in the right direction.
This year, however, marks a turning point, which I fear will be a
sustained downturn in the industry's long-term outlook. Within the past
week alone, we saw the Nation's third largest carrier--Delta--announce
a first quarter loss of $6.4 billion. On that same day, the Nation's
fifth largest airline--Northwest Airlines--posted a quarterly loss of
$4.1 billion.
This month, we witnessed four of our airlines--Frontier Airlines,
Aloha Airlines, ATA Airlines, and Skybus Airlines--forced to declare
bankruptcy. Four airlines collapse in 1 month, and two airlines
announce a combined loss of $10.5 billion in one single quarter. I
think this underscores the dangerous direction in which I believe our
aviation industry is now truly heading.
It is clear that in 2008 this industry is moving through what could
be one of the most tumultuous periods it has ever experienced in our
history. The recent window of profitability that commercial aviation
experienced now seems to have closed. A worrying question for all of
us--and for the future of our economy--is whether these losses will
come to characterize its long-term financial outlook. I fear it will.
The challenges confronting our Nation's aviation market have now
sharply affected a variety of consumers and stakeholders. Airline
companies have been posting multibillion dollar losses this quarter
alone. Tired and frustrated passengers are being caught up in the
thousands of flights that have been canceled or delayed due to a number
of things, including safety issues. A quarter of the airline industry's
entire workforce have lost their jobs since the year 2000. I will
repeat that: One quarter of the airline industry's entire workforce
have lost their jobs since 2000. The air traffic control system remains
outdated. As I indicated, we are trying to catch up with Mongolia. And
management problems continue to beset the industry's overseer, the
Federal Aviation Administration.
Compounding all of these difficulties is the reality that the
industry is operating against a backdrop of a weaker American economy
and general turmoil in global credit markets. Aside from all this,
however, there remains one factor that has done more to change the face
of the commercial aviation sector than any other; that is; the
escalating cost of its lifeblood. We call it the price of oil.
To illustrate this dramatic spike in costs, it is worth recalling
that back in 2000 the price of oil stood at $30 a barrel. Recently, oil
prices have been approaching $120 a barrel. But this does not
necessarily reflect the true cost to the airlines, as there is a
difference between the price of oil and the price of jet fuel, what the
industry refers to as the ``crack spread.'' This means that, for
example, on April 18, 2008, when oil was trading at nearly $116 a
barrel, the price of jet fuel per barrel was trading at nearly $144--
$116 for a barrel of oil becomes $144 for airplanes.
Such a dramatic increase in the industry's largest single cost
clearly illustrates the extent of the problem it must absorb. With oil
prices alone having risen 75 percent in the past year, it is somewhat
unsurprising that the move toward further consolidation is gaining in
speed.
It seems increasingly inevitable that the Delta-Northwest merger
proposal will unleash a wave--a further wave--of industry
consolidation. I note that various airlines have been considering a
number of possible pairings for some time now.
In September 2005, US Airways and America West Airlines merged. In
2007, US Airways pursued an unsuccessful bid for Delta, and Midwest
Airlines was purchased jointly by Texas Pacific Group and Northwest.
Numerous reports also indicate that further consolidation between
United Airlines and Continental Airlines is likely--we will see--to
happen as a consequence of the move by Delta and Northwest to
consolidate--the domino theory.
With the emphasis on pursuing market share prior to 9/11, the big air
carriers are now focused on route and flight profitability and are less
willing to fly half-empty planes to keep their nationwide networks
competitive. In an effort to improve their financial standings and
compete with smaller carriers, many legacy airlines--commercial
airlines--have aggressively sought to cut costs by reducing labor
expenditures and by decreasing capacity through cuts to flight
frequency, use of smaller aircraft, or the elimination of service
altogether to some communities.
The major U.S. carriers have shown much more capacity discipline over
the past few years and have retired, to their credit, many older,
inefficient aircraft. Available seat miles--which is a term of art: a
measure of capacity--increased only 0.3 percent in 2006, down from a
3.3-percent increase in 2005, and an 8.7-percent increase in 2004. As a
result, load factors have increased by more than 10 percent since 2000,
bringing in more revenue per operation. Profitability. Statistics from
the Air Transport Association show that the legacy carriers' combined
fleet was 2,860 aircraft in 2006, an 18-percent reduction from almost
3,500 planes at the end of 2000. So it has gone from 3,500 planes in
2000 to 2,800 aircraft in 2006. That is clearly a trend.

In West Virginia, aviation represents about $3.4 billion of the
State's gross domestic product. To us, that is a rather huge figure. It
employs over 50,000 people in our State. So the State has a direct
interest in the impact any consolidation within the industry may have
on services. I know the Presiding Officer knows that feeling.
I have said before that while I am not unilaterally opposed to
consolidation, I do believe every transaction has to be considered on
its own merits. With regard to Delta-Northwest as a merger, I believe
it is critical that the Federal agencies examine the fine details of
the merger thoroughly before approving it.
Now, this is of particular concern to me because Delta and Northwest
provide critical air services to my State of West Virginia that allow
businesses in our State to be connected with the rest of the world. I
have said in the past, and I reiterate here today, that air services to
small communities in my State and across the country depend on network
carriers that use hub-and-spoke operations. There are no other
sustainable options available to us. None. We have very few private
aircraft, and obviously they are not available for commercial use. Low-
cost carriers are not going to serve West Virginia's communities
because we do not have the volume of passengers to work with their
business models.
My State needs healthy network carriers if we are to attract new air
services. At present, low-cost carriers are not going to fill the
service void in our markets. It disturbs me, then, that since March 13
of this year alone, American air carriers have exited from 86 routes
throughout the country, my guess would be all of them rural. I fear
these airlines plan to exit many other routes in the future.
It was to ensure West Virginians continued access to adequate air
services that I helped to create and expand the Small Community Air
Service Development Program and the Essential Air Service Program. Both
of these arrangements provide a Federal subsidy for air carriers to
operate out of very rural areas. From my perspective, an adequate air
service in West Virginia is not just a convenience but it is a flatout
economic necessity for our survival.
The airline industry is not only about the viability of the companies
that it comprises. It is important that we not forget the increasingly
large number of American passengers who underwrite the industry by
consuming its services each year. Passenger traffic demand has now
surpassed pre-9/11 levels, with total passenger enplanements of 745
million in 2006, nearly 12 percent higher than the 666 million
passengers who enplaned in 2000. The FAA's most recent forecast
estimates passenger enplanements will grow to 794 million in 2008.
We are all aware and have probably often experienced ourselves the
delays and the cancellations that seem to be a growing feature of this
industry. Air carriers and their passengers continue to be plagued by
severe weather problems--which seem more than normal each year--and an
air traffic control system that lacks the necessary capacity to handle
demand effectively. That is why, when we talk about building an air
traffic control system, which is at

[[Page S3486]]

least up to Mongolia--and as I said this morning, that is a little bit
of an exaggeration because they had no air traffic, and so they started
with what we want to move to. They started with what they should have
started with, and that is digital GPS.
These conditions produced near gridlock at several key gateway
airports throughout the country this past summer which almost matched
the record delays reached in the summer of 2000. Congestion and delay
problems cost the airlines and passengers billions of dollars each year
in lost productivity, canceled flights, and, obviously, fuel expenses.
The severe congestion and delay problems that continue to plague air
carriers and their passengers further exacerbate the high cost,
therefore, of fuel. Inclement weather, an out-of-date air traffic
control system, and management problems keep planes in the sky longer,
which only increases fuel-burn. Due to these conditions, only 69
percent of reported commercial airline operations arrived at their
destination on time during June and July of 2007.
I am pleased we have been able to work with the FAA on several
efforts currently underway to address these problems, including a
continuous focus on expanding infrastructure and adopting operational
procedures, such as the implementation of reduced separation
requirements and programs such as this fascinating acronym, the Area
Navigation and Required Navigation Performance program, that permit
more precise navigation of aircraft. But, you see, that is very
difficult to do with x ray, with ground radio. That is why we need an
air traffic control system which is modern, as every other modern
country in the world has. Furthermore, since many of these delays
originate in the New York City airspace, the FAA has committed itself
to taking a number of specific steps to relieve congestion there--and I
applaud them for that--including airspace redesign and the opening of
military airspace to create additional capacity during particularly
congested times.
All of these efforts are a part of a longer term endeavor to solve
these problems by modernizing the entire air transportation system
through the implementation of the Next Generation Air Transportation
System, the system I have been talking about a good deal. I am
confident we can continue to pursue a workable strategy to increase the
capacity of the National Airspace System to keep pace with projected
growth and demand for air travel while ensuring that we continue to
operate the world's safest aviation system. But then again, you always
have to look underneath the figures.
The pending Delta-Northwest merger could represent an absolute
watershed moment in aviation industry history which would have a
dramatic and wide-ranging impact on the industry, passengers,
employees, and our national economy. This merger is emblematic of the
aviation sector's future, in my judgment. We must acknowledge that a
greater degree of consolidation is becoming simply unavoidable due to
pressing economic factors, and we have no excuse to not manage these
changes responsibly.
I will always remain a fierce defender of West Virginia's right to
adequate and reliable air services. That is why I went there in the
first place. That is why I am there. I fight for fairness, and we don't
have it in aviation, and I fear losing more of it. Even in these new
challenging times for the sector, I will continue to ensure that my
State is not adversely affected by this consolidation or any
consolidation.
Finally, I am concerned that even when the aviation industry did
return to profitability over the past 2 years, services in my State did
not dramatically improve or expand. They weren't investing. Now that
the sector looks to be heading toward a more decidedly bleak future
over a prolonged period, our efforts need to be redoubled so as to
ensure crucial air services to small and rural communities everywhere
are rightfully defended.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today we debate the FAA reauthorization,
and it is a debate that probably should have been joined a long time
ago. This is a piece of legislation that has been kicking around here
for a long time. I serve on the Senate Commerce Committee. I know both
the House and the Senate reported bills out many months ago. We are
finally now getting a bill on to the floor for debate. It is important
we do this.
This is legislation that is critical to the infrastructure that
supports our aviation industry, which is a critical industry to
America's competitiveness, and if we look at what is happening in the
airlines these days, obviously, we need to do everything we can to make
sure we have a viable and effective aviation industry and commercial
airlines are able to operate and provide the services to travelers who
need to get, every single day, to places both here at home and around
the world to conduct business and to recreate.
In the course of this debate, I cannot help but be struck by the fact
that I do not see there is anything we can do in the FAA
reauthorization that addresses what fundamentally is probably plaguing
the airline industry more than anything else, and that is the high cost
of energy.
I am looking at some information, graphs, some data. We can look at
this graph for January of 2004 and see where the cost of crude oil and
the cost of fuel for the airlines, for the aviation industry, was then
and where it is today. Follow the red line, the way it tracks up. That
spikes up. That is almost a straight vertical line.
If we take another graph which shows what the consumption of fuels is
in the airline industry, the green line--you probably, Mr. President,
cannot see this; it is too far away, but the green line shows
consumption has been fairly static in terms of the amount of fuel that
is used. But if we look at the expense or the cost of the fuel, it has
increased at a sharp and dramatic rate.
My point very simply is that we cannot affect, I do not think, in a
very substantial way, what is plaguing and ailing the airline industry
and a lot of other industries in this country absent addressing the
fundamental cost issue of energy independence.
If we look at where we are as a nation today and where we were 30
years ago, not much has changed. I remember as someone growing up
during the oil embargoes and what we were experiencing in the late
1970s and a real concern at the time about our dependence,
overdependence, dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy. At
that time it was 55, 60 percent. Here we are 30 years later and we are
more than ever dependent on foreign sources of energy. Mr. President,
60 to 65 percent of our petroleum comes from outside the United
States. We have very little control over the supply. The only way we
fix that, the only way we can impact energy costs in this country in a
meaningful way is to increase supply.

We can talk a lot about a lot of issues with regard to this problem,
this challenge we face as a country. There are some things we can do to
impact the demand side, too, and we did that in the Energy bill last
year. We increased for the first time in a very long time fuel economy
standards so now automobiles are going to be built to standards that
will require more miles per gallon than they currently get. That will
help control, to some degree, the demand side. Obviously, I think
individual consumers in this country, drivers in this country, are
going to begin to take steps to reduce the amount of fuel they consume
because it is impacting so adversely their pocketbooks on a daily
basis.
But there is not anything we can do totally on the demand side to get
us out of this mess we are in. We have to do some things to impact
supply. I can't help but think that if we had taken some of these steps
years ago, back in 1995 or thereabouts when President Clinton vetoed
legislation that would have allowed oil exploration on the North Slope
of Alaska--at the time it was argued, oh, it will take 5 to 10 years
for us to develop this resource and when we do, it will not be that
much anyway. It is only 1 million or 1\1/2\ million barrels a day, and
that is not that significant in the overall scheme of things. Here we
are 10 years

[[Page S3487]]

later. If we had done that then, this would be fully developed, we
would have the barrels of oil on a daily basis, the daily equivalent of
what we get from Saudi Arabia, available to meet our demand in this
country.
It has probably been, since that time, half a dozen times we voted on
that. In the House of Representatives, I don't know how many votes we
had over there that would have allowed authorized exploration for oil
on the North Slope of Alaska. We have had that vote in the Senate,
since I have been here, on at least one occasion, maybe two times,
where we were a couple votes short of reaching that magic 60-vote
threshold that would allow us to move forward and explore some of these
opportunities that we have to grow our supply, our domestic supply of
energy.
Because he had listened to this debate for some time--I have been in
the Congress, now, for the better part of 10 years and always was
interested when the debate would come to the floor of the House or the
Senate and you would hear both sides come to the floor and make their
arguments--I actually went up to Alaska and visited the section 1002
area where it is proposed we develop this oil resource. We landed in
Barrow, AK, in February, a couple years ago. It was 38 below. We
visited a couple of the existing sites at Prudhoe Bay and then we went
over to section 1002, which is the vast area we are talking about for
development. What struck me is we are talking about a 2,000-acre
footprint that would be used to access the oil below the surface, and
with modern technology, you can actually get to those reserves below
the surface with horizontal or directional drilling, with a minimal
footprint on the surface, and it would be done during certain parts of
the year where it wouldn't impact wildlife or anything.
Incidentally, there were caribou everywhere. Anybody who is worried
about the caribou on the North Slope of Alaska, they have nothing to
worry about because, if anything, it has been increased since the
activity that has taken place up there.
But this particular area is a very isolated, remote area on the North
Slope of Alaska. The estimates run from somewhere between 6 billion and
16 billion barrels of oil beneath the surface or, as I said, the daily
equivalent of about 1.5 million barrels a day, which is comparable to
what we get from Saudi Arabia.
To put it in perspective, a 2,000-acre footprint, for those who come
from my part of the country who have an agricultural background, that
is the equivalent of three sections of farm ground. That in an area of
some 19.2 million acres in what they call ANWR, this refuge area. But
if you look at the State of Alaska in its totality, Alaska, believe it
or not, is 7.5 times the size of the State of South Dakota. You could
put South Dakota geographically into Alaska 7.5 times. That is how vast
this area is up there. It is part of our country, part of an area that
has enormous resources below the surface that could be very meaningful
in terms of addressing America's energy needs.
When you visit that area, you cannot help but be struck with, No. 1,
how supportive the governmental leadership is in that area--the
Governor, the State legislature, in many respects most of the local
citizens. There are always those who are opposed to this type of
development. We heard from them as well. But overwhelmingly, the
majority of people in that area want to see this development.
Here we are again facing a crisis as we head into the summer driving
season, travel season, vacation season. Families are looking, making
plans. In my State of South Dakota, farmers are getting into the field,
and they are having to deal with the input costs associated with high
fuel costs, diesel costs. This is an economic issue that affects
literally every American but particularly those middle-income Americans
and those who this summer are looking at making plans to travel. They
are going to be facing $3.50 gasoline, perhaps higher than that. Who
knows how high that is going to go?

My point very simply is we should have been taking these steps many
years ago. We are now paying a price for inaction on the part of this
Congress when it comes to the things we can do to add to supply in this
country, to make sure we are taking full advantage of the domestic
resources we have right here at home so we do not have to continue to
allow other countries around the world to hold us over a barrel when it
comes to our energy needs.
The other thing we ought to have been doing--again this is something
that is long overdue--is developing more refinery capacity. We are
pretty much maxed out. We have not built a new refinery since 1976.
They will tell you they have added or expanded existing refineries, and
all that is true, but at the end of the day we have not done very much
in terms of addressing the refinery shortage we have in this country
either. So when it comes to raw resources such as the oil, petroleum
resources below the surface on the North Slope of Alaska, when it comes
to the ability to refine that into gasoline, we have some deficiencies
that are of our own making. I regret the fact that we were not able to
find the votes in this body to do these types of things many years ago,
when today it would make a big difference in the challenge we face.
The other issue, the other point I will make--because I think it gets
back at this issue of how doing some of these things, although at the
time they may have seemed to be not that substantial, could make a
difference at the margin--is what has happened with renewable energy in
this country. We are now generating about 7.5, almost 8 billion gallons
of renewable fuel or ethanol in America today. One would think perhaps,
when you use 140 billion gallons of gasoline on an annual basis, that
that is not that big of a dent. But there was a study done by Merrill
Lynch, it was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back,
that were it not for ethanol, the price per barrel of oil and the price
per gallon of gasoline would actually be 15 percent higher than it is
today. So even though it is 7.5 billion gallons out of a 140-billion-
gallon annual demand for gasoline, it is affecting the price because it
is impacting supply in a positive way.
In the same way, if we had opened the North Slope of Alaska when we
had an opportunity to do so, we would have that 1\1/2\ million barrels
a day coming into this country, which also would significantly impact
the supply in a way that would begin to bring down prices. The only way
we are going to bring downward pressure on prices is to increase
supply. That is why I have been such a big advocate for renewable
energy.
We are at 7.5 billion gallons today. The Energy bill that passed last
year calls for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by the year 2022. I
think we can reach that. We are not going to reach it with corn-based
ethanol. We have to diversify the production of ethanol in this country
with other forms of biomass, whether that is by woodchips out of our
forests, whether it is by switchgrass, which we have an abundance of on
the prairies of South Dakota--but there are a lot of opportunities for
what we call the next generation, for cellulosics, to meet the demands
for energy in this country. I think we should be moving full steam
ahead when it comes to support for renewables so we can lessen the
demand on foreign energy and we can become more energy efficient here
at home and develop the supplies of fuel we have.
That being said, even if we get to 36 billion gallons of renewable
fuels, we still will be way short of what we need. We are going to need
a mix of fuels. We are going to rely on some of those traditional
sources of fuel such as petroleum. Coal-to-liquid holds great promise
in terms of being able to be used as a fuel, and coal is something we
have in infinite amounts. We ought to be developing these types of
resources. I think we also ought to be allowing States that want to,
particularly some States in the upper Midwest, where ethanol is
produced, to go to higher blends. We are at 10 percent ethanol today.
There are States I think would like to go to higher blends. We ought to
allow them, particularly when the studies are concluded by the
Department of Energy and the EPA, which are determining the impact on
drivability, materials compatibility, emissions--all those sorts of
things. When they come back, which I believe they will, and
conclusively determine that going to higher blends would not in any way
adversely impact any of those metrics I mentioned, we ought to be
moving to higher blends of ethanol because I think that also will help
take pressure off oil prices as we continue to use more and more
renewable energy.

[[Page S3488]]

These are all parts of a solution. We need supply. But we have not
taken the necessary steps to add to supply. If not now, I don't know
when. When we get prices such as we are seeing, and the impact that is
having on transportation industries such as aviation, such as trucking,
such as agriculture, these are impacts on our economy that are only
going to bring great economic strain to many industries and a loss of
jobs.
We can do something about it. We ought to be doing something about
it. We need to now authorize, even though we have had many
opportunities to do it in the past--we ought to do it on the North
Slope of Alaska and offshore and other places where we have these
reserves. We ought to allow refineries to be built. We tried to get
legislation through that would allow refineries to be built on BRAC
bases; in other words, bases that were closed through the BRAC process,
and it was blocked by the Democrats on the Environment and Public Works
Committee.
Even when it came to the renewable fuel standard last year, that
passed through the Senate and House and ultimately was signed into law,
there is a deficiency there as well which has come to light now and a
change that was made at the very 11th hour by the Speaker of the House
that prevents biomass, residual types of biomass such as slash piles
that are generated in our national forests, to be used to make
cellulosic ethanol.
That makes absolutely no sense. We have waste products in our forests
that add to fuel loads that create fire hazards. All we are simply
saying is these types of products could be used to make next-generation
biofuels and help grow our supply of renewable energy, and that was
stripped out, at the 11th hour, by the House in the conference.
That is very unfortunate because it is steps such as that, it is
steps such as blocking legislation that would allow for expedited
permitting of refineries on BRAC bases, it is things such as blocking a
vote on opening the North Slope of Alaska to oil exploration--those are
the types of things that are stopping us. Those are the types of steps
and maneuvers in the Senate and the House that are stopping us from
adding to the supply of energy so we can do something about it, so we
can impact, in a meaningful and positive way, the high prices that are
affecting consumers across this country.
I wish to make one observation as well with regard to renewable
energy because ethanol has come under a lot of criticism of late, much
of it I think inspired by opponents of ethanol, such as oil companies.
People are talking about the high cost of food, and food prices have
gone up in this country. But if you think about it, the amount of corn
that goes into a box of corn flakes, for example, it is about a nickel.
If you think about what impacts the cost of the things we buy at the
grocery store, transportation has a profound impact on the cost because
you have transportation, you have packaging, processing--all those
things which are very energy intensive. So when you have high energy
prices, high fuel prices such as we are facing today, that has more to
do with the costs of food than the cost for a bushel of corn is ever
going to have, when it comes to corn flakes or when it comes to popcorn
or many of the other things that are being mentioned now by some of
these groups opposing ethanol.
I also would point out what I mentioned earlier and that is that were
it not for ethanol--this again was reported upon by the Wall Street
Journal a few weeks back, a study done by Merrill Lynch--oil prices,
per-barrel oil prices and per-gallon gasoline prices would be about 15
percent higher. Couple that with the fact that a high commodity price
means the Federal taxpayers under our farm programs are not making
payments to producers to the tune of a savings of about $8 billion last
year, according to the USDA, and there are lots of impacts that are not
being mentioned by those who are specifically singling out ethanol and
criticizing ethanol for the increase and runup in food costs.
Add to that or couple that with this piece of data that comes out of
the USDA, that $8 billion in savings in taxpayer payments would be made
under farm programs that were not made, that didn't go out this last
year because of high product prices. That is a substantial savings to
the taxpayers of this country. Again, couple that with the fact that
ethanol has contributed 15 percent reduction in the overall costs of
fuel in this country, ethanol is having the impact we hoped it would by
increasing supply and taking pressure off the price at the pump in this
country.
High fuel costs, high food costs, all these things are impacting
consumers across this country. We cannot solve that problem. We cannot
solve the problem of the airlines until we do something to develop our
domestic resources right here at home.
We have some supplies, some reserves underground even in places that
previously had not been contemplated as a source of energy, in places
such as the Dakotas where we are now finding there are some reserves
down there, that with prices being what they are may be economically
recoverable. We should be doing everything we can to develop domestic
resources, whether it is on the North Slope of Alaska, whether it is
offshore, whether it is in the Dakotas, in the form of oil below the
surface, or corn that grows above the surface that is renewable that we
can use every single year. We need to be developing resources right
here at home that will lessen our dependence upon foreign sources of
energy and do something to take the pressure off these high gas prices
we are seeing today that are affecting every single American.
I hope we will pass a comprehensive energy bill, one that includes
increasing our supply, one that finally, once and for all, will allow
us to get to that 6 to 16 billion barrels of oil beneath the surface on
the North Slope of Alaska, which is widely supported by the political
leadership in Alaska, the local citizenry there, that increases the
amount of renewable energy we use in this country by allowing States
that choose to increase and go to higher blends, perhaps to 20 percent
or 30 percent ethanol. These are all things we could and should be
doing today--allowing refineries to be built on bases that have been
closed, and allowing for expedited permitting when it comes to
constructing those refineries. These are all things that ought to be
part of this energy solution. I think people are going to hold this
Congress accountable if we do not take steps in that direction. My hope
would be that before we move out of here before the next break--we have
got a break coming up in a couple of weeks--we will take some action
that will do something meaningful to lower energy prices for people in
this country, increase our supply to build new refineries, to support
the increased use of renewables. Those are all things that will happen
and provide solutions and meaningful relief to the hard-working people
in this country who are now faced with much higher gasoline prices.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Menendez). The Senator from North Dakota.

Energy

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know a couple of my colleagues will be
coming to the floor, specifically Senator Cantwell will be coming to
the floor, to speak about some energy issues in a moment. When she
does, I will relinquish the floor.
I wanted to make a couple of comments. I listened with interest to my
colleague from South Dakota making comments about the energy situation.
We agree on much of what he has said and disagree on perhaps some
amount of it. But renewable fuels, ethanol, providing renewable energy,
all of that is very important.
The area where we would perhaps not agree is ANWR, which in my
judgment ought to be a last resort rather than a first resort. But I
might say to my colleague from South Dakota that particularly with
respect to the Outer Continental Shelf, if you measure where oil
exists, the best resources and reserves of oil and gas on the Outer
Continental Shelf first are in the Gulf of Mexico; second, off
California; third, off Alaska.
One of the things we have recently done on a bipartisan basis in this
Congress was to pass something called Lease 181, which opened up a
portion of the Gulf of Mexico for development of oil and gas. I was one
of the four Senators who led the effort on that. I was pleased to do
that because we are now

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producing and are going to be producing more oil and more natural gas
from one of the most productive areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. So
production is certainly one of the areas we ought to be concerned
about, as the Senator indicated. Production, conservation, efficiency,
and renewables, all of these are important elements of an energy
policy.
No one has ever accused this Congress of speeding. I understand that.
This system is not established to be necessarily efficient. It has
checks and balances, which makes it very hard to get things done. But
there is an urgency at this point, an urgency for families, for
farmers, for truckers, yes, for businesses and airlines with respect to
what is happening with the price of gasoline.

There are a lot of reasons for all of this, and I am not here to try
to ascribe blame, I am here to say: Let's fix some of these things. I
am going to offer an amendment, by the way, to the FAA reauthorization
bill, that deals with something that as of today I note that 67 Members
of the Senate have agreed to.
Some while ago, I introduced the notion of prohibiting the further
movement of oil underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I
have introduced legislation on that matter. Long ago I introduced it,
had discussions with the Energy Committee about it. I had 51 Senators
sign a letter to the President to say: Stop putting oil underground
when the price of oil is $115, $120 a barrel. Stop taking oil out of
supply and putting it underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
It is already 97 percent full. Why would we take oil out of supply to
put upward pressure on prices, on both oil and gasoline, at a time when
oil is at a record high? That makes no sense. Let us use at least some
reservoir of common sense. Fifty-one Members of the Senate signed my
legislation, signed the letter to the President in support of my
legislation.
Today, 16 members of the minority signed a letter to the President.
They have also introduced legislation. So 51 and 16, 67 members agreed,
that includes the person who spoke on the floor today. Senator McCain
has called for the identical policy. That is 67. That is veto proof. If
67 Members of this Senate say to this President and this
administration: Stop sticking oil under the ground, nearly 70,000
barrels of sweet light crude every day--that is the most valuable
subset of oil. We have had testimony before the Energy Committee that
suggests it has put as much as a 10-percent increase on the price of a
barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline. And while families and farmers
and truckers and airlines and all of these businesses are trying to
figure out how on Earth do we pay this fuel bill, and while we see the
damage and the dislocation of this country's economy because of it,
this administration merrily goes along sticking oil underground. It is
unbelievable. At the very least you ought to expect some common sense
here.
Now, what has gotten us into this mess? Well, let me describe what is
happening with Saudi Arabia. And if ever we should wonder about the
danger of being overly dependent on oil from off this country's shores,
this is the chart that shows why.
The Saudis, who have the largest reserve of oil in the world by far,
have reduced their production by 800,000 barrels a day since 2005. They
have reduced production by 800,000 barrels a day. That is part of the
problem. So we sit here in the United States with a prodigious need for
energy to make this economy work. And, by the way, as an aside, I have
said before: We stick straws in this planet and suck oil out of the
planet. We suck out 86 million barrels of oil a day. One-fourth of it
is required here in the United States of America. We use one-fourth of
everything that is produced every day in this world, on this planet.
One-fourth of that oil is used here in the United States. We have an
enormous appetite. So we need to conserve; we need more efficiency in
the use of energy. We have done some things in that area. The CAFE
standards increased fuel efficiency by 10 miles per gallon over 10
years. We have done some things in a range of these areas, but we are
far too dependent on foreign sources of oil. When the Saudis decide
they are going to cut back oil production by 800,000 barrels a day, and
they say to us: Oh, by the way, with our strategic relationship, we
want you to sell us precision munitions, it seems to me we ought to not
be arming to the teeth the Middle East.
But aside from that, strategic partnerships run both ways. You cut
your oil production by 800,000 barrels over 2 years; and by the way, we
would like some strategic weapons for our strategic need in the
region--it does not seem to me that is the way a partnership should
work.
But let me describe with a couple of charts what is happening with
this strategic reserve. Here we see that oil prices have nearly doubled
in 1 year. There is no natural reason for that. The supply-demand
relationship in the marketplace does not justify this. The marketplace
simply is not working.
We have these people who shake the cymbals and worship at the altar
of the marketplace. By the marketplace, that is the greatest allocation
of goods and services known to mankind. Well, I believe it is a great
allocator of goods and services. I used to teach economics in college
briefly, and I understand the marketplace. But the marketplace needs a
referee from time to time because sometimes the marketplace does not
work; the arteries get clogged, it does not work.
So here is what has happened in a year. Oil prices nearly doubled in
a year. Now, my colleagues have used quotes, and I have used many
quotes. I am going to use one by Mr. Gheit, because Mr. Gheit said it
all. He said: There is no shortage of oil.
Who is Mr. Gheit? He has worked for 30 years for Oppenheimer and
Company, the top energy analyst for Oppenheimer. He said:

There is no shortage of oil. I am absolutely convinced that
oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel.

Oil speculators, including the largest financial institutions in the
world--he said:

I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It is open 24/
7. Unfortunately it is totally unregulated. This is like a
highway with no cops and no speed limit and everybody is
going 120 miles per hour.

What is he talking about? He is talking about hedge funds neck deep
in the futures market. He is talking about investment banks neck deep
in the futures market. Is this because hedge funds and investment banks
want to wallow in oil? Do they want to bathe in oil? Do they want to
take it home and store it in their garage? They do not want to see oil.
They want to speculate and make money.

They have made a lot of money. People who never had it are buying
things from people who never will get it. So they are making money on
both sides of the transaction.
Now, what does that do when you have this kind of unbelievable
speculation? It causes the runup of prices in a very dramatic way.
There is a trader named Andrew Hall. I would not know him from a cord
of wood; never met him, never will, I suppose. He earned $250 million
on the commodity market over the past 5 years, one-quarter of a billion
dollars. He was betting. All of this is betting. He is betting long
term, short term. He is not somebody who takes oil as a commodity; he
just bets.
There are a couple of things we ought to do. I will be very brief.
One, in order to be engaged in the futures market, as I have said
before, if you want to speculate in the commodities future market for
oil, for example, you only require 5 to 7 percent down; only 5 to 7
percent margin. You can control $100,000 worth of oil with $5,000 to
$7,000 of your own money.
If you wanted to wager, that is a good way to do it, I suppose. If
you want to do it in the stock market, to do this on margin, it takes
50 percent to buy in the stock market. But if you go to the commodities
market, you can speculate to your little heart's content with 5 to 7
percent. That makes no sense. It ought to be 25 percent, in my
judgment, or perhaps if you want to buy oil futures, you ought to take
possession of the oil.
But one way or another, when you have a market that is not working,
and you have speculation running out of control, I think there is an
obligation on the part of this Congress to address that. Because that
speculation is driving up the price of oil, and driving the price of
gasoline well up beyond where the fundamentals would suggest. It
injures the American drivers, consumers,

[[Page S3490]]

business, and it injures this country's economy.
The second point I indicated I was going to make is on the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve. This chart shows what the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve looks like. These are holes in the ground, and we shove oil
down those holes. We save it for a rainy day; it's 97 percent filled at
this point. We are putting just under 70,000 barrels a day every day
underground right now.
Sixty-seven Members of the Senate as of today have expressed
themselves publicly. They think it is the wrong thing to do. They think
this administration is making a mistake and they ought to stop it. Now,
why do people say that? Because they know if we stop taking that 70,000
barrels of sweet light crude and sticking it underground, it will be
part of the inventory out there, and they know that would put downward
pressure on gas prices and downward pressure on oil prices. That is why
67 people have come to this conclusion.
The question is: What do we do to try to stop this? Well, when you
put oil underground, you drive up to the gas station, you see the
effects of this kind of policy. The question is: What do we do to put
some downward pressure on prices? Stop filling the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve and stop it now.
There is a bill on the floor of the Senate, the FAA reauthorization
bill. I am part of the committee that has produced this bill. We need
to modernize the system for aviation in this country. It is desperately
in need of modernization. It is going to cost some money to do that,
but we do not have much choice. We have had, I think, four airlines
declare bankruptcy in the last month and a half.
A substantial part of it, announced by every one of those airlines,
had to do with the price of jet fuel.
I am going to offer, as an amendment on this bill, legislation that
would call a halt to filling the Strategic Reserve. To stop taking oil
and sticking it underground, and put some downward pressure on jet fuel
prices, downward pressure on gasoline prices. Some say this doesn't fit
on this bill. It does. Fuel prices are why three or four airlines have
gone bankrupt in the last month and a half.
I will be over here tomorrow speaking about this topic because I
believe strongly that we should do something about this issue.
My colleague Senator Byrd used to talk about Aesop's fly. He
described the fable Aesop's fly who was sitting on the axle of a
chariot who would observe: My, what dust I do raise. There are some
here in the Congress who have that notion, that if you just make a
little bit of noise and have a little bit of activity, you can claim a
lot of success. The fact is, that is not what the American people want
this time. They want this Congress to understand the urgency,
understand the problem, understand what it is doing to this country's
families, and do something about it. When you have speculation that
runs out of control, this Congress has a responsibility to do
something. We can't have someone else do it, we can't wait for somebody
else. It won't get done. If we don't do it, it won't happen.
These are two steps I believe we ought to take: No. 1, increase the
margin requirement and stop the speculation in the futures market to
begin to put downward pressure on prices; No. 2, stop putting oil
underground when prices are at a record high and put downward pressure
on prices. If we did both of those things, I am convinced we would
bring oil and gas prices back down and we would provide some relief to
the American driver and to the American economy.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. CANTWELL. I come to the floor this evening to talk about the
energy crisis, the price of oil, and how consumers are seeing the
impacts of high oil prices in their everyday lives. The high price of
oil is impacting businesses and many consumers can't afford to take
family vacations and trips, dragging down our economy over all, and
dragging us further into an economic downturn.
What I have heard today on the Senate floor from many of my
colleagues is accusations and claims about what is going on and what
might have transpired on various issues that might have caused the high
price of gasoline and certainly the price of crude oil, which is now
well over $100 a barrel. I think it is important to think about what
Congress has already done and to make sure we are telling consumers
what needs to be accomplished to solve the problem.
What we are hearing from analysts on Wall Street is that this issue
is going to continue to exacerbate, and that oil prices will continue
to rise. When we think about oil futures all the way out to 2015, still
being over $100 a barrel, and oil futures impacting the physical price,
it raises a lot of concerns about how the economy can sustain such a
high price of fuel.
Let's start with some basics about supply and demand because many of
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about the fact
that they think oil supply hasn't been there, that growth in the
numbers of people in India, China, other countries, is exacerbating the
problem.
While we have seen growth in demand from other countries, this
chart--starting in 1980, going all the way to 2006, and showing some
numbers until 2008; the orange line is demand, and the yellow line is
supply--except for some anomalies here, shows that supply and demand
have kept pace. So anybody who wants to say this is all about supply
and demand hasn't looked at a chart such as this showing that these
lines pretty much track each other. What it tells us is that we have to
look at other fundamental things that are happening in the marketplace
and not just make accusations about what is going on.
In fact, if you want to look at the high price of gasoline, you can't
say it is just an increase in demand. During the summer season, motor
gasoline consumption in the United States is actually projected to
decline by four-tenths of a percent, and it is projected to decline by
three-tenths for the whole year. We are actually seeing a decline in
demand. Obviously, that is not a surprise. Given the high price of
fuel, people are not able to afford to continue their normal habits.
But the issue isn't that the price is being driven up simply because
there is this increase in demand. The high price of gasoline also isn't
about the fact that there are low inventories. Some people have wanted
to say this issue is about low inventories. When you look at what the
industry says, here is an oil analyst who basically says that gasoline
inventories are higher than the historical average at this time of the
year. So there is really no need to worry about tight supply. Here is
an oil analyst saying that.
It points, again, to other questions about what is going on. Some
people have said: Let's blame it on renewables. Many Democrats have
been big supporters of renewable energy, big supporters of getting
alternatives into the marketplace, because we believe if you get
alternative fuel into the marketplace, it will lower the demand on
normal fossil fuel and create some competitive advantages. I know there
are some people--a Governor--basically saying: You ought to repeal the
whole RFS. You ought to get rid of this issue as it relates to having a
renewable fuels standard. Here is the Wall Street Journal report from
Merrill Lynch saying that without biofuels, the price would be even
higher, and that basically oil and gasoline prices would be 15 percent
higher if biofuels weren't helping to increase the output. So it is
wrong to say that somehow our focus on renewable fuels has exacerbated
the situation when, in fact, it has done nothing but help the
situation. In fact, I love that this Texas A&M study basically
found that ethanol has increased in excess of what our renewable fuels
standard was, indicating that relaxing the standard would not cause a
contraction in the industry, nor would it cause a reduction in the
price of corn.

The issue today is where do we go for solutions. Part of the issue is
that many of my colleagues are saying it is all about more supply of
fossil fuel for the United States. We have had this debate so many
times in the Senate. We

[[Page S3491]]

have had a debate about whether the United States, with 3 percent of
the world's oil reserve, really is going to make a dent in increasing
supply and giving consumers a chance to get off fossil fuels. We are
going to have a big debate about global warming and its impact and
whether we should even keep our focus on fossil fuel or accelerate
getting off of it.
Many times today, even down at the Rose Garden, we hear the word
``ANWR'' again, and how ANWR was the secret recipe for lowering gas
prices in America. I obviously don't support opening up drilling in the
Arctic Wildlife Refuge because it is a wildlife refuge. But I certainly
don't support it when even our own Energy Information Administration
has said that drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would only reduce
gasoline prices by a penny per gallon and only 20 years after we got to
peak production. So at a penny per gallon, if people use 400 to 500
gallons of fuel, we are talking about a few dollars of savings there
over many, many months. So the notion that ANWR would be some way of
solving our problems just isn't true.
I know a lot of people have talked about refinery capacity, and I
think you need to talk to the oil companies about refinery capacity and
why they have not expanded. I know my colleague Senator Boxer has been
out here many times talking about how she had to stop consolidation in
her State because they didn't want to keep a refinery open. But I know
this: We know it is not environmental regulation. In fact, according to
this CEO of an oil company:

We are not aware of any environmental regulations that
would prevent us from expanding our refinery capacity or
siting a new refinery.

So we know it is not about environmental regulations. That is not
what is stopping them either.
Some people have said: Don't take the tax incentives away from the
oil industry; don't do that because somehow that is what is keeping the
industry afloat. The industry is making record profits. They are making
so much profit they don't even know what to do with the profit. They
are buying back their own stock.
We know this: We know the President of the United States, George W.
Bush, said:

With $55 oil, we don't need incentives for oil and gas
companies to explore.

It is way above $55 a barrel. So I take him at his word that we don't
need incentives to continue to explore at that level.
Let's talk about what is the issue. Let's talk about what is the
problem we need to solve, for which we need to be responsible to
consumers, to businesses, to the economy, and to make sure we continue
to deal with this threatening crisis.
I know one oil analyst who looked at these markets. And maybe the man
on the street, if you ask him, he thinks something is going on in the
oil market. He doesn't think it is about supply and demand. He didn't
happen to see that first chart I put up, but he knows something is
going on because he sees the irregularity of prices. But this analyst
said: Unless the U.S. Government steps in to rein in speculators' power
in the market, prices will just keep going up. Basically he is saying
that speculators have too much power in the market right now, and
unless the Government does its job, the prices are going to keep going
up. So it is time for us to act. It is time for us to get smart about
this.

It reminds me of the debate we had when the Enron crisis hit the
electricity markets. It probably took well into 2001, when many people
said: Do you know what, this is all about environmental regulation, or,
this is about not enough refineries, and it is about the fact that
there is a supply shortage. They came up with all these things.
So as 2002 rolled around and as more and more investigation was done,
we found out that, no, it was actually manipulative schemes by various
individuals within a very large organization--actually several
organizations--that purposely manipulated the electricity markets. They
did this so they could short supply and drive up the price.
Now, Congress acted in 2005. We said--after we found out all the
facts, we heard all the terms: Death Star, Get Shorty, all the various
schemes that had been manipulated--we kept thinking: How could this
happen when we had a Federal Power Act that said, on the wholesale rate
of electricity and natural gas, you have to have just and reasonable
pricing. We thought that is a clear enough message for people. But, in
fact, it was not. It was not a clear enough message. It cost my State
billions. It cost California's economy billions. So what did we do?
Congress made it illegal to use manipulative devices or contrivances in
the electricity or natural gas physical markets, and we greatly
increased the penalties for market transparency violations.
Now, why did we go to the extent of doing this? We could not believe
that such activities were in some way a gray area and that somehow
people were still confused post-Enron that this kind of activity was
OK. Some people said: Well, you already have the electricity and
natural gas markets under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
What else do you need?
But I was very proud that Congress passed this legislation. Since
that law has been on the books, since 2005, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, as it relates to electricity and natural gas
markets, has been aggressive about pursuing this power and using it.
What have been the results? Well, the result has been making market
manipulation illegal when it comes to oil and natural gas, so that they
have had 64 investigations, 14 settlements, $48 million in civil
penalties, two ongoing market manipulation cases that could net over
$450 million in civil penalties, and a dramatic increase in self-
reporting and self-policing. It is like one of my staffers said: If you
want people to straighten up, let them know there is going to be a cop
on the beat. Let them know there is going to be someone investigating
these activities and we are not going to tolerate it, and people will
start obeying the law. So we did that.
In 2007, we decided that if this kind of pervasive activity was still
continuing in the natural gas and electricity markets--if that was
still happening--maybe there was some correlation here with what was
happening in the oil markets, because clearly, after looking at all
those charts we just went through about supply and demand, and
everything else, we could not understand what was happening. We have
had oil company executives tell us that the price of oil today should
be at somewhere between $50 and $60 a barrel given where supply and
demand is. Oil company executives are throwing up their arms saying: We
don't know why the price of oil is well over $100 a barrel. So we, in
the Energy bill in 2007, passed a law saying it is time to make the
same laws we have for natural gas and electricity apply to oil markets.
We said that any person who uses, directly or indirectly, ``any
manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance'' in connection with
the wholesale purchase of crude oil or petroleum distillates--that that
was illegal and that Congress made violations subject to penalties of
up to $1 million a day. That is $1 million a day because we believe, if
you are doing these kinds of activities, every day that you have
engaged in those activities you should pay a fine for that.
Now, where are we today with this authority? Because some people say:
Well, you passed a law. Is it working? This law does not really go into
effect until the Federal Trade Commission adopts rules and puts them
into action. That is what we are waiting for now. My colleagues on the
Commerce Committee have urged the FTC to hurry about this task, that it
is so important to our economy and to consumers to hurry about this
task. I know Senator Reid has encouraged them, Speaker Pelosi has
encouraged them. So we are in the process now of hoping that the FTC
will implement this rule and give proper notice but start the process
because once the marketplace knows--just as they did in natural gas and
electricity--that these kinds of activities will not be tolerated, we
might be able to make a dent in what is happening with this excessive
speculation in the energy markets.
Well, let's look at what exactly the market manipulation behavior is
that we are concerned about. We basically have said we are interested
in whether companies have manipulated the supply, whether they have
given false reporting, whether they have cornered

[[Page S3492]]

the market, and whether they have engaged in any kind of rogue trading.
Those are the things we are concerned about.
Well, let's talk about supply manipulation for a second because that
is something for which people might say: Well, it is just about supply
and demand, and how do you pass a law about supply and supply
manipulation? Believe it or not, there are good Federal statutes on the
books starting with a lot of case law and a lot of history. What we are
saying is, we do not want any artificial influencing of supply in the
energy markets. We do not want someone creating something that is not a
normal part of business but is artificially used to create a shortage--
for example, diverting or exporting marginal supply in tight markets.
That is, we know the market is tight on oil. You can go back to that
chart on supply and demand. They pretty much track very closely. So it
is a tight market. When you have an event like Katrina, it is even
tighter.

Our question is, Did somebody export supply outside the country just
to create a shortage in the United States and drive up the price? Have
we had hedge funds holding crude oil ships off the coast just so the
price will go up for a few more days?
That is the second point: holding supply deliveries temporarily to
boost prices. We have people now who are major players in the oil
market who really are not the end users of crude oil supply. They are
just big financial movers in the marketplace. They are not taking the
delivery of oil because they are out there delivering it to various
jobbers or what have you. They are there for a financial investment.
In fact, we want to know if some of these inventory management
strategies that have basically reduced physical supply--and basically
everybody just trades their reserves on paper, and everybody just
trades the paper around, where that, in fact, does not have much
transparency to it. So we do not know how much that creates that
management system in and of itself. Where we used to have 30 days of
crude oil supply, thereby, the market was not so tight. Now we have
this paper inventory system. We do not know what that really means. We
do not know how much supply is really in reserve. Is that being used to
manipulate supply?
Then, obviously, what we saw--I just think back to the Enron days
when people said: Oh, no, no one would ever shut down a powerplant just
to short supply. They would never do something like that. It must all
be about the fact that really something was wrong. Well, we found out
that there were purposeful shutdowns of various powerplants to short
the market and to drive up the price. So we want to know if there are
unnecessary and untimely ``maintenance'' shutdowns just to impact
supply in the marketplace of oil.
We also want to know whether there is false reporting because false
reporting can lead to misleading or inaccurate statements that also can
hinder the marketplace.
Part of this legislation we passed in this bill is to say, in 2007,
that if you gave false information, that was also subject to civil
penalties of up to $1 million a day because part of this--the same in
the Enron case--is it was very hard to understand these schemes. If it
was not for videotapes that were put together, we would have never
known exactly how these schemes would have worked just by looking at
the books. So we want the Government to look at some of this
information and if there are manipulative schemes. But if they provide
false information, we believe that also should be a penalty.
Now, we know that in one case of natural gas--El Paso Merchant
Energy--they reported nonexistent trades to reporting firms while at
the same time failing to maintain certain records. They basically
created false information about the trades that were going on. The
result was six traders were convicted for false reporting and
attempting to manipulate the energy market.
Now, the reason why this is so important to the subject we are
debating today is that manipulation has happened in natural gas, and
why this is so important now is because in the oil markets, and
particularly in the oil futures market, we do not even have the same
transparency in reporting requirements that we do with other
commodities like natural gas. We have given them an exemption in the
Enron loophole that was done in 2000 as part of the Commodity Exchange
Act, so they do not have those reporting requirements. So we cannot
even go and get some of this information to know that something like
what was happening with El Paso Energy is transpiring in the oil
markets, as it did in the natural gas markets.
So it is one of the reasons why we want to close the Enron loophole
and to say that the trading of energy futures, which definitely impacts
the price of oil today--and we will get to that on another day out here
on the floor, about how the energy futures price impacts oil today, we
will get to that, but for today we just know that if you do not have
reporting, then there is no way--whether it is the SEC or the CFTC or
FERC or the FTC--no one has any ability to get access to the
information.
We also know that we want cornering the market to be illegal.
Cornering the market would be exploiting the market power through
excessive mergers like natural monopolies or blocking new entrants to
basically corner the marketplace. We know this is something about which
we have a great deal of concern. We know British Petroleum attempted to
do this. Basically, they purchased excess propane in Texas, within the
pipelines, to hold it from the market and then sell it high. We know
they did that in trying to corner the market. The end result was that
the Department of Justice and the CFTC ended up with a settlement case
against them in the number of $303 million. So we know these things are
happening in other energy markets, and we know they are a problem in
the--potentially a problem--in the oil markets today.
We also know rogue trading is potentially a problem as well.
Mr. President, I am not going to take much more time on this issue as
it relates to the high price of gasoline. I plan to continue to come
out to the floor to talk about this issue about the need for the CFTC
to promulgate this rule and get on about investigating the oil markets
and to make sure consumers are protected.
I talked about what I think the rule needs to do. It needs to
prohibit the manipulation of supply and to have a strong statute and
penalty for falsifying information. It has to have a prohibition on
cornering the market.
I believe that rogue trading is something else we are seeing in the
marketplace. We need to have a prohibition on that. People might ask:
What is that? It is employing manipulative trading schemes such as
buying or selling large volumes of stock or futures contracts with the
intention of influencing prices.
You can imagine, if somebody has a large position in one of these
energy supplies or stocks, that basically ends up impacting the
marketplace. We actually found this with the Amaranth case, in the area
of natural gas. Amaranth sold large volumes of what is called next
month natural gas delivery in the last 30 minutes of the market. What
they did is basically crashed the close of the market. By selling large
amounts of futures contracts for delivery of natural gas at the close
of the market they manipulated the price and benefitted their large
positions in other financial derivatives, and that ended up impacting
the physical price of natural gas. The good news is the FERC, because
of the 2005 law we passed, was on the beat, doing its job.
Unfortunately, consumers paid something akin to $9 billion in increased
natural gas costs before the FERC could get this situation under
control. Now they are in the enforcement phase of a $291 million civil
penalty against Amaranth. We know these situations are happening with
rogue trading.
We know of another case that is similar to rogue trading and price
manipulation, where Marathon Oil allegedly attempted to sell oil
delivery contracts below the market prices in order to basically lower
the market price, benefitting them as a net purchaser of foreign crude
oil. So there ended up being an investigation by the CFTC, and today
they are in a $1 million settlement with the CFTC on that issue.
All these issues, I believe, need to be investigated in the oil
markets. They need to have a strong statute passed by the CFTC, similar
to in 2005 for electricity and natural gas, where we can

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see the results of the investigation, we can see that a Federal agency
is doing its job; we need to do the same thing with the oil market.
In fact, there are five things I think we need to do that would help
protect consumers from high prices of gasoline. Our economy and
consumers cannot afford much more.
We need to close the Enron loophole, in which that 2000 law said that
online trading promulgated by Enron, they said, they don't have the
same transparency, don't have to open their books or allow people to
see what they are doing. We know for other commodities the Securities
and Exchange Commission and CFTC look at those things to make sure
there is not a manipulation in the marketplace. We cannot even get
these because we gave them an exemption. That needs to be repealed. We
need to require oversight of all oil futures markets. That is, as I
said, the oil futures price affects the physical price of oil. If
people are going to buy oil futures well into 2015 at over $100 a
barrel, it is going to impact the physical price of oil today. If you
can buy oil at over $116 in the oil futures, it is hard to believe that
oil is going to drop much below that in the physical market. But these
are markets--unlike, again, our commodities in the United States, on
NYMEX or the mercantile exchange, such as corn or soybean futures, this
is an exchange the United States doesn't have any regulatory impact on.
We don't have the ability to look at those books, any enforcement
mechanisms. We don't have the ability to protect consumers on that kind
of speculation if there is manipulative activity going on.
As I said, we need to get the CFTC to finish their work. This is so
important that I think the Department of Justice should coordinate all
these agencies because there are futures activities, there is a
physical market, and there is the falsification of information. What
happened with Enron is the Department of Justice created a task force,
called the Enron Task Force. It coordinated these agencies and got to
the bottom of what was happening with the electricity markets and the
manipulation. I think the Department of Justice should create an Oil
Market Fraud Task Force to do the same thing.
Lastly, I know my colleagues will talk about this on the floor--to
make price gouging a Federal crime. There are 28 States in our country
that have the ability, in an emergency, to make a declaration in the
event of a natural disaster, or huge anomalies in the market, and help
stabilize the situation with executive power. I am willing to give that
same executive power to the President of the United States. I hope he
would use it.
In conclusion, there is a lack of transparency in energy trading
markets. We need to fix that. This is one of the CFTC Commissioners who
said:

I am generally concerned about a lack of transparency and
the need for greater oversight and enforcement of the
derivatives industry.

He is basically talking about this offshore exchange, where we don't
have the same kind of oversight that we do. In fact, I said earlier
that we have more regulation of hamburger and the future of beef than
we have of oil. I will tell you that oil is critically important to our
economy, and it needs to have the same kind of transparency and
oversight as other futures commodities.
Last, I will reiterate that even on Wall Street, even the analysts
who know what is going on in the marketplace, who know these prices are
outrageous, not based on supply and demand, are saying:

Unless the U.S. Government steps in to rein in speculators'
power in the market, prices will just keep going up.

An energy analyst said that this month.
It is clear the marketplace even thinks there is too much speculative
power, and the answer is for us to do our jobs--for the FTC to do their
job, to get the help of DOJ, and for us to make sure we are doing our
job on oversight in giving consumers protection. But I think there are
very few people in America who do not think these prices are out of
control, that it is not normal market forces, it is not normal supply
and demand, and if it keeps careening out of control, it is going to
wreck our economy. It is certainly wrecking consumers' pocketbooks
right now.
I hope we will take action. I hope the Federal agencies will get on
their feet and be aggressive about protecting consumers on this
important issue. I know we will continue to talk about this on the
floor as we continue to pass legislation that does protect America from
these out-of-control gasoline prices.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, Senator Coburn has agreed to come to the
floor. I have a couple unanimous consent requests. He wanted to be
present when I made these.

Unanimous Consent Requests--S. 579

Mr. President, every year, hundreds of thousands of women in America
are diagnosed with breast cancer. Breast cancer will strike
approximately one in eight American women in their lifetime, with a new
case diagnosed every 2 minutes in America. This year alone, it is
estimated that 250,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and
40,000 of them will die.
We have made remarkable progress in breast cancer diagnosis and
treatment, but we still do not know the cause of breast cancer. There
are theories but no one really knows. Scientists have identified some
risk factors. Those factors help explain fewer than 30 percent of the
cases.
This legislation that I am going to ask unanimous consent for in just
a few minutes, the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, would
establish a national strategy to study the possible links between
breast cancer and the environment and would authorize funding for such
research.
Eminent scientists believe the breast cancer that is being found,
discovered in America, very likely is the result of something in the
environment. Resulting discoveries could be critical to improving our
knowledge of this complex illness which could lead to better prevention
and treatment and even perhaps one day a cure.
Although we first introduced this legislation in 2000, and despite
strong bipartisan support--right now we have 68 Senators supporting
this legislation and are cosponsors of it, Democrats and Republicans--
Congress has yet to act and send this bill to President Bush. Last
session, the bill was reported out of the HELP Committee, but one of
our colleagues prevented final Senate passage. This session we have
worked in good faith to address any concerns that have been raised
about this legislation. As a result, this act was once again reported
out of the HELP Committee, and as I have indicated, it is sponsored by
68 Senators.
It is long past time for the Senate to take up and pass this broadly
supported bipartisan legislation. Too many women and their families
have waited too long for Congress to act. I tried recently, last week,
to pass this legislation by unanimous consent, but one Senator objected
to my request. In response to that objection, I then offered a time
agreement that would allow for 2 hours of debate on this bill with two
amendments on each side. I think this is a fair offer for legislation
that over two-thirds of this body have cosponsored. This offer was
rejected.
I urge that we have this matter move forward. I urge my colleague to
reconsider this offer and end the opposition to this matter--opposition
to even debating this legislation which enjoys such broad bipartisan
support. It is time to offer more than words of encouragement to those
affected by breast cancer. Our wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and
friends have waited long enough.
I therefore ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
immediate consideration of Calendar No. 628, S. 579, the Breast Cancer
and Environmental Research Act; that the committee-reported substitute
be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read three times and passed, and
a motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; and that any statements
be printed at the appropriate place in the Record as if given with no
intervening action or debate.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.

[[Page S3494]]

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will not take the time now to go into
detail. I will wait until the Senator from Washington finishes her
speech.
I will say I have a personal involvement with this issue. My sister
has breast cancer. My sister-in-law has breast cancer. My most
cherished person in the world besides my wife and children and
grandchildren died of breast cancer. She was a breast cancer nurse
specialist. I understand the disease. We spend more on breast cancer
research than any other cancer in this country today. We spend $100
million on environmental causes related to breast cancer research.
I don't object to us spending money on breast cancer research. I
object to us making the decisions about what the scientists know we
should do versus what the politicians want us to do. So I will spend
some time after the Senator from Washington State speaks outlining in
detail my opposition to putting one cancer ahead of the other 70, No.
1; and one disease that--specifically, we are going to put one specific
disease and one ideology of a specific disease ahead of all of the
others, and I will outline that in detail.
On the basis of that, I will object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I understand the objection, but I would hope
everyone within the sound of my voice understands the lack of logic to
the statement just made by my friend, the Senator from the State of
Oklahoma. If he has problems with this legislation, why would he
prevent the whole Senate from taking it up? Why wouldn't he come to the
floor as legislators are supposed to do rather than some guerilla
attack and not allowing this to come up, recognizing if I bring this to
the floor, it takes time.
Now, I don't understand why, if he has all of these great ideas as to
what should or shouldn't be done. Let's bring this to the floor, offer
an amendment, offer two amendments. Why stop this matter from being
legislated?
So I understand. I can't wave a medical degree, but I can wave the
fact that this legislation is important to many people in America
today, and this legislation gives them hope that something can be done
to find a cause and hopefully a cure. If my friend is so certain of his
position, he should be able to offer an amendment and prevail in that
regard.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
consideration of Calendar No. 628, S. 527, the Breast Cancer Research
Act that was just spoken about, at a time to be determined by me
following consultation with the Republican leader, and that the bill be
considered under the following limitations: that other than the
committee-reported substitute, the only first-degree amendments be four
amendments--two for each leader--that are relevant to the provisions of
the underlying bill and substitute; that there be a time limit of 1
hour for general debate on the bill and 1 hour on each amendment; with
all time equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their
designees; that upon the disposition of all amendments, the use or
yielding back of all time, the substitute, as amended, if amended, be
agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time with no
intervening action or debate; and the Senate proceed to a vote on
passage of the bill, as amended.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. COBURN. I would like to ask the majority leader a question. Are
you aware of the thousands of studies that have already been
published--
Mr. REID. Of the what?
Mr. COBURN. Are you aware of the thousands of studies that have
already been written on this subject?
Mr. REID. I say to my friend, I am not aware of the thousands of
studies. I am aware of the need to move forward with this legislation.
I would say to my friend, if, in fact, there are thousands--and I don't
in any way doubt the word of my friend--then why should that be a basis
for stopping us to legislate on this issue?
We have 68 Senators who believe this legislation is important. If
you, the Senator from Oklahoma, have a cause that this legislation is
ill-founded, people are--I have changed my position on legislation
before, and I can't understand why you would stand in the way of
allowing this legislation to be legislated. That is what we do here. We
are legislators.
So, no, I am not familiar with the thousands of studies.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's
response to my question. The reason is because the policy is wrong. We
passed the NIH Reform Act just to eliminate this sort of issue because
what we know is, out of the 2,037 diseases, we don't know which one to
fund properly. We don't know which one to spend the most money on, but
peer-reviewed science does. So what we have decided is, because we have
a very effective lobbying group on this because it does impact hundreds
of thousands of women, we are going to step right back in the middle of
the NIH reform and say we didn't need it.
So the policy of us directing spending on research when we don't have
the knowledge base to know that is the right thing to do--and the
researchers agree with this, that we don't have the knowledge--in the
context of all of the other 2,037 diseases, I will object to moving
forward on this because the policy is wrong. It is not about debating
it. I am happy to debate it all you want. But the policy is wrong.
Who says that the women who died of breast cancer this year are more
important than the same number of people who died from lung cancer that
is not related to smoking? Are we going to say that? Should we tell the
NIH everything they should do, every amount of money, every disease we
should decide, based on the effective lobbying of people who are
absolutely affected--there is no question about that--but should we
make that decision? The answer is no, we shouldn't. We should let the
experts, not the Senators, not the Representatives, but the scientific
experts make those decisions. We have given that charge to the NIH.
That is what we ought to do. They would more sooner come to a cure and
solve the problem than with us micromanaging the NIH.
With that, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I first got interested in diseases of women
a number of years ago when in my Las Vegas office three women came to
see me. They didn't want to be there. They were embarrassed for being
there. They had a condition. It is called interstitial fasciitis. I had
never heard the words before, and it is still hard for me to say these
words after all of these years. But I looked into this. The NIH and the
scientific community and the country thought this was a psychosomatic
disease; that this was something these women had in their head; that
even though each of them described the pain the same--like slivers of
glass being shoved up and down their bladder--it was all in their head.
I had the good fortune of having a woman, who is an orthopedic
surgeon, who had this same condition, and she said: This is not in my
head, it is in my bladder, and something should be done to study this.
We have begged the NIH to do it. We have had others that we have asked
to do it, and they are not doing anything: You, Senator Reid, should
have something done about this.
And we did this. We established a registry. We did that by
legislation. As a result of that, now almost 50 percent of the people
who have that disease have medicine to take that takes away their
symptoms, the pain. It is pretty good.
Have we cured the disease? No, we haven't. But progress has been made
because, as policymakers, that is what we do. We set policy. The NIH is
a body of this legislature, this Congress, and we have an obligation
and a right to direct them to do things. Now, they do good work. They
do very good work. But there are other things that we think they should
be doing.
Who cares about this, my friend asks? Well, who is lobbying for this,
he asks? Two hundred and fifty thousand women who are going to get the
disease this year are the lobbyists. They don't come here, all of them,
and 40,000 to 250,000 are going to die. Now, is every penny of this
money that we want to appropriate going to hit the mark and do the
right thing? Maybe not, but it is going to lead to some discoveries
that

[[Page S3495]]

will help this disease and probably other diseases.
So I say, I am disappointed and we are going to continue to work this
issue. This issue is not going to go away. It is not only this Senator
but 67 other Senators and others who will support this when and if we
get this to the floor. So I appreciate the courtesy of my friend from
Oklahoma. He is a gentleman. I disagree with him on occasion, but I
appreciate his statement.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 5613

Mr. REID. We have more than 50 million low-income people--about 1 out
of 6 Americans--depend on Medicaid for their health care. These are the
poorest of the poor.
This administration has issued a series of regulations that will
undermine the Medicaid safety net and create barriers for accessing
care for the poorest of the poor.
These regulations, touted by the administration as ``savings,'' would
not lower health care costs.
Instead States--already facing tough economic times, strained
budgets, and increased demand for services such as Medicaid--will
either have to raise revenues elsewhere or be forced to cut services to
our Nation's most vulnerable at a time when they need help the most.
Each regulation has different impact on individuals, providers,
communities, and States. They include, among other things, detrimental
provisions, such as limiting services for people with disabilities;
preventing children from receiving health care during the schoolday;
cutting payments to public hospitals and other safety net providers for
such undertakings as emergency rooms, burn units, and trauma centers.
The administration claims these regulations are necessary to fight
fraud and waste in the Medicaid Program. But in a recent hearing on the
Medicaid Program, the General Accounting Office testified it did not
recommend the administration's proposed changes. They would not help.
We are committed to ferreting out any fraud that may exist in the
Medicaid Program. But regulations that harm our most vulnerable and
place greater burden on fiscally strapped States are clearly not the
way to accomplish this end.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
consideration of Calendar No. 719, H.R. 5613--which, I might add,
passed the House by a huge vote--a bill to protect the Medicaid safety
net; that the bill be read the third time and passed and the motion to
reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, there is $38 billion worth of fraud in
Medicaid. We are on an unsustainable course as a nation. We have $74
trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. When we talk about controlling
spending and earmarks, we always hear it is a mandatory program.
Finally, not all of what the administration has done do I absolutely
agree with but on key points I do. These rules will make a difference.
If we are interested in fraud, let's write the regulations to get out
the fraud. That hasn't been the offer. All we are willing to do as a
body is say to the administration you have ideas that will get rid of
$42 billion worth of fraud over 5 years, but we don't like it because
we are feeling pressure from the State Medicaid directors, when we know
States game Medicaid. A great example: There is nothing in this to stop
any Medicaid Program from taking a child from school to the doctor, but
it does stop the 500-some-odd million dollars being spent on
transporting schoolchildren back and forth to school who don't have a
medical appointment. So what we have is a system that has been gamed.
We have allowed it.
Now the administration put something forward which we don't like and
which we ought to negotiate with them to change, rather than saying you
are not going to do any of it. The fact is the unfunded liabilities
associated with the Medicaid Program are about $12 trillion. We are
going to do something--just forget it.
I applaud the administration for making an effort to try to fix some
of this. But to say you cannot do any of it, when some of it is very
badly needed, is wrong. So unfortunately, Mr. Leader, I have to object
again.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I indicated in the last piece of
legislation we tried to move forward on, would my friend allow us to
bring it to the floor and debate the issue and offer amendments to it?
Mr. COBURN. I am objecting not solely for myself. I am happy to work
on trying to put together a proposal with the administration that would
make a difference and then bring it to the floor.
Mr. REID. How long do you think that would take?
Mr. COBURN. Two weeks.
Mr. REID. I appreciate that.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington State is
recognized.
Mr. COBURN. May I inquire how much longer the Senator is going to be?
Ms. CANTWELL. Three or four minutes.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
recognized following the Senator from Washington.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I say to the majority leader, I
appreciate what he said on behalf of women. Washington State has one of
the highest rates of breast cancer in the Nation. We have a very good
detection program and good survival rates. We don't know the cause of
it, but we know it is very important to continue the research.
I know that in 1992, the so-called year of the woman, when we had one
of the largest classes of women elected to the Congress, we saw an
increase in women's health research. Why? Because women were in the
Congress to say it was important to us to not have the research
directed in a way that favored some of the particular programs that
were about men's health.
So I thank my colleague. The majority leader is right to say we have
to respond to our constituents who are concerned about this issue and
want to give attention to it. Clearly, women's health research hasn't
gotten all the attention it deserves in the past.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
Ms. CANTWELL. Yes.
Mr. REID. Does the Senator acknowledge that with diseases such as
interstitial fasciitis, more than 90 percent of the people who have
that disease are women? Women-related diseases have not gotten the
attention they deserve, and one reason is because the legislature has
been dominated by men.
Ms. CANTWELL. That is what we found in the 1990s, in that we didn't
have enough representation to ask the hard questions, to say our
constituents were not being heard on this issue and to raise this in
various committees. Frankly, that was the time period when, for the
first time, we had a woman on every committee in the House of
Representatives. Once we got women on every committee, we asked the
hard questions and increased the percentage of women's health research.
I think it is a very poignant point to the fact that, while NIH does
good work, we have to respond to our constituency and, certainly, there
can be discrepancies and issues that the larger public should have a
say in as to health research.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Cancer Research

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes answering
the question as to why would one Senator, in the light of all the other
Senators who have cosponsored this bill, stand and block a bill that 60
some Senators want to see passed? I think it is a great time for us to
define what is wrong in our country today.
What is wrong is we think about the next election far off and more
often than we think about the next generation. I want us to cure breast
cancer as badly as anybody else. The point Senator Reid did not tell
you is we are already spending $100 million on this very subject, the
environmental connection to breast cancer. We are also spending more on
breast cancer research than we are any other cancer, and yet it is not
the leading cause of death.
We are going to have 160,000 people die this year from lung cancer,
the

[[Page S3496]]

same number who are going to die from breast cancer, 40,000 of which
have no relationship to smoking, but you do not see anybody on the
floor telling the NIH to do a study between the environmental effects
and nonsmoking-related lung cancer.
The reason it is important is a little example of penicillin. It is a
great example. We stumbled onto that through the science of
microbiology, but we would never have gotten there if we had told the
NIH: Study scarlet fever and find a cure; study strep tonsillitis and
find a cure; study syphilis and find a cure; study gonorrhea, and we
had gone four or five different ways. The point I am making is basic
research is what we ought to be doing.
In the mid-nineties, I was one of the strong advocates for increasing
the size of the NIH budget. It ought to be twice what it is today. The
reason it is not $60 billion a year instead of $29 billion is because
we will not fix the waste in Medicaid of $42 billion over 5 years, we
will not fix the $90 billion in fraud in Medicare, we will not fix the
$8 billion that was paid out by the Pentagon for performance bonuses
that nobody earned last year, we will not fix the $50 billion that is
associated with waste within the Pentagon. Nobody will fix it. We had
one wheelchair that was sold multiple times for $5 million to Medicare
in Florida alone--one wheelchair. We will not do the hard work that
creates the long-term best interest for our country, but we will
certainly respond to--granted, very real issues, but in an
inappropriate way that does not get us where we want to go.
The NIH budget spends more on breast cancer research than any other
research. We are going to spend $100 million on research on the link
between breast cancer and the environment. Plus, the Defense Department
is going to spend another $138 million, and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention combined is greater than $1 billion. There is
not any other disease we do that on right now. Yet we are going to tell
them to do more of the same they are already doing, and we are never
going to think about the other people with other diseases, the other
2,037 diseases that are not as well organized and have nowhere close to
the same investment at NIH.
The point is, the hardcore, heavy-duty, peer-reviewed science ought
to guide us, not emotion, not my poor cousin Sharon Wetz who died 6, 7
years ago of breast cancer, not my sister who has breast cancer, not my
sister-in-law who has breast cancer. What we ought to be doing is what
is in the best overall good for this country as a whole. And if we need
to spend more money on breast cancer, then the way to do that is to get
rid of some of the waste and double NIH, but any dollar we spend on
breast cancer is a dollar we are not going to spend on colon cancer, it
is a dollar we are not going to spend on thyroid cancer, it is a dollar
we are not going to spend on lymphoma, because we are going to take it
away.
In this bill, it says this should not interfere with peer-reviewed
research. If that is the case, then this will never get appropriated.
So either this bill is about doing research or it is about a press
event for a politician. I will tell you, I think it is the latter.
In 2006, we modernized the NIH to keep exactly this thing from not
happening. We took away all the silos. We gave the Director the power
and the authority to start making great decisions based on what the raw
science was telling him so when we invest in raw science, we magnify
the potential benefits that come from it. Now we are going to go back
and say we are going to start picking diseases; we are going to start
managing it. Why do we need a staff at NIH? Let's let the Senate pick
every disease and how much we are going to spend on every one of them;
we obviously are qualified.
We are not qualified.
I find it amazing--I do not doubt Senator Reid's story, but as a
surgical resident in 1984, I was doing cystoscopies and diagnosing
interstitial cystitis. We didn't think it was psychosomatic. We knew it
was a real disease 3 years before Senator Reid came to the Senate.
The question politicians ought to be asking is what is NIH doing?
Where is the oversight on what they are doing? Find out what they are
doing. How does their work rank in comparison to the other disease
initiatives at NIH? We have not had a hearing on that issue.
The HELP Committee has had hearings on multiple speciality disease
bills. So we are back into answering a real need, but maybe it is not
the best priority. What if we spent the same money we are going to
spend on this disease and we got a breakthrough that cured all cancers,
but because we decided we were going to reconnect with one specific
aspect of one potential risk for one cancer, we missed it?
The wisdom of this body has to be to think in the big picture and in
the long term. I have diagnosed breast cancer over 500 times in my
medical practice. It is a gut-wrenching, life-changing disease.
Fortunately, we have had great improvements in it and our diagnostic
skills are getting better, especially with digital MRI on breast
examination. Early diagnosis has an impact, but what we do and how we
do it is going to matter.
I will put forward that Senator Reid can bring this bill to the
floor, and if he brings it and we take the time--and I am more than
happy to take 4 or 5 days to talk about how we should work at NIH, and
I am happy to do that--and the bill will pass, but then are we going to
do the same thing with every other disease the HELP Committee brought
out? There are about eight other bills just like this bill. We are
going to tell NIH: You have to spend this money here, you have to do it
here. Regardless of what the raw molecular science says, regardless of
what the peer-reviewed literature says, we are going to tell them what
to do. Consequently, we are going to delay scientific discovery.
My opposition is not that I don't want to cure breast cancer. My
opposition is not that I don't want us to find a cure. I want to find a
cure for all of them. I am a two-time cancer survivor. I would love to
prevent colon cancer. I don't like walking around with half a colon.
There are a lot of consequences to it. I don't like having melanoma and
having half my neck taken away. I don't like it, but I don't want colon
cancer to displace possible cures for everybody and in the best
interest of this country.
Will I object? Every time I come to the floor I will object because I
think the ultimate underlying policy is wrong. The way we solve breast
cancer in this country is double the NIH funding and let science drive
the way we need to go. The way we double NIH funding is get rid of the
$300 billion waste, fraud, and abuse that is in the discretionary
budget every year which most of us don't have the courage to attack
because it might gore somebody's ox.
To those who have breast cancer, as a physician and somebody who has
been through cancer, I know your fear. I have been there. I have
experienced the questions. I have experienced the chemotherapy. I have
experienced the losing of 30 or 40 pounds. I have experienced the
nausea and vomiting that is persistent with you for 4 or 6 months. Most
of all, what I have experienced is, we have a great health care system
and great research in this country that is saving a lot of lives. If we
will get our hands out of it as politicians, they will be able to save
a whole lot more lives than when we put our hands into it and tell them
what they must and shall do.

I thank the good Lord for the time he has given me. I am 5 years out
this month from colon cancer. There is no guarantee, but while I am
alive, I am going to do things that are in the best long-term interest
of our research for health care, that give us the most life for the
dollars that we invest. If that is pleasing politically, great. If it
is displeasing politically, it is OK too. What is important is we are
good stewards--not just with the money but with the direction to allow
science to lead us to cures.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

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